A Leap in the Dark
by Redgauntlet
Summary: A sequel to 'Tinkerbell'; also crossover with 'Dark Skies'


A LEAP IN THE DARK

A LEAP IN THE DARK

**by Michael S. Oliver**

By way of disclaimer (which I omitted last time I passed this way); _Quantum Leap_ and_ Dark Skies_, and all characters from these series, are the property of their respective copyright holders, and no infringement of those copyrights with a view to profit (or anything else except the sheer fun of it) is intended or should be inferred. There is, in keeping with the ethos of _Dark Skies_, one real person in this story; if that person, or his lawyers, is reading, no offence is intended and, I hope, none will be taken.

Incidentally, this story appears in the index under 'Redgauntlet' because it seemed _de rigueur_ to write under a pseudonym; if I'd known I'd have kept my own name!

But enough rambling; on with the motley.

AUGUST 13, 1965 

'What are you _doing?_' a woman's voice was screaming not three inches from Sam Beckett's right ear.

Sam barely heard, his vision filled by the truck looming towards him. His consciousness dazed by this latest Leap and acting on instinct alone, he wrenched the wheel between his hands hard to the right. With a protesting shriek from the tires, the car fishtailed wildly before Sam got it back on the right side of the highway.

He punched down on the brakes as the car slid towards the shoulder. The car lurched downward on one side for a moment, bounced hard as the undercarriage hit something in the few moments before it came to an ungainly halt. For a moment, the only sound was that of laboured breathing returning to normal. At last, Sam recovered enough composure to wheeze out, 'Oh, boy.'

'John, what happened?' The woman's voice again; Sam turned towards it. Into his field of vision moved a young woman. He guessed her age as mid-twenties; her hair was brown and held back by a pink Alice band at her forehead. 'Are you okay?' she was asking.

'Yeah, I'm – I'm fine,' Sam stalled. Another Leap, another bout of prevarication, while he tried to work out where he was and who he was supposed to be.

'You should have woken me earlier. Where's the sense in getting killed?' Now that the shock was past, she was smiling. 'Finding us dead would just _ruin_ Frank Bach's day.'

From the way she said it, Sam guessed that this was some kind of private joke between John – that was _his_ name! – and his wife. No, his fiancée; Sam snatched a glance at her hand, saw an engagement ring, but no wedding band. 'Yeah, I guess it would, at that,' he said. Cautiously, he tried the ignition. It stayed silent. He tried again; once, twice, three times.

The woman clenched her fist. 'Darn!' she hissed. 'It's shot, isn't it?'

'I guess so.'

'Well, I am _not_ staying here all night.' She paused, face thoughtful for a moment. 'There was a sign back down the road for a motel not far from here.'

'That's good. With any luck, we can get someone to come out here to tow this thing in.'

'Between the motel and the repair bill, we're going to be low on cash again. I hope it's cheap.' She turned to look at him. 'John, you're sure you're all right?' she asked.

Sam looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. As always, the face that returned his gaze was that of a stranger; John looked similar in age to his companion, generally clean-cut, but badly in need of a shave. From the look of him, Sam guessed that these two must have been on the road all day. 'Honestly, I'm fine,' he said, 'just a little – disoriented, I guess. A good night's sleep should do me the world of good.'

Fate, or God, or whoever was responsible for Sam's Leaps, had smiled on him for a change; he and the woman – whose name, he learned was Kim Sayers – found a passing trucker kind enough to give them a ride to what passed for civilisation. Kim gave their names to the receptionist – a fiftyish woman with harsh features and a build that suggested that she could have played pro football at nose tackle – as Kim and John Lincoln, having slipped a ring onto her wedding finger in the car park. Maybe it was just to save money on the rooms, but Sam hoped it wasn't for the reasons he was thinking. The girl looked cute, but he couldn't carry his impersonation as far as all that. The rules of Project: Quantum Leap – rules that _he_ had made, or so he'd been told – forbade it.

The matron had told them that they were in time for dinner. Subjectively, Sam didn't feel it had been long since he'd eaten, but his body felt more than ready. He'd been told that discernible time elapsed between Leaps; from the size of his appetite, he felt that this gap could have been as long as a week.

The young waitress looked up as they entered, smiled at them as she slipped the book she was reading – a cheap dime-store romance, by the look of the cover – out of sight. 'Hi,' she chirped. 'What can I get you folks?'

'Something good and simple,' said Sam.

The waitress thought for a moment. 'Well, ham and eggs is simple enough. And it's pretty good, too. We keep our own pigs down the road a ways.'

'Kim?' Sam asked.

'What?' Kim sounded startled.

'Do you want ham and eggs, too?'

'Oh. Yes, that'll be fine. And some coffee to go with it would be lovely.'

As the girl went back into the kitchen, Sam turned to his companion. 'Now it's _my_ turn to ask if _you're_ okay,' he said.

Kim raised a wan smile. 'You're going to think I'm crazy.'

'Believe me, I know from crazy when I hear it. What's the matter?'

Kim shook her head. 'No, like you said before, I'm probably just tired.'

The haunted expression didn't leave her face, but Sam didn't feel enough on top of the situation to enquire further. Right now, he felt pretty drained himself. It was Lord only knew when, he was wandering somewhere in the desert in the company of a total stranger, and for once, his customary back-up seemed to have backed out.

Or had he? A thudding sound behind him alerted Sam's attention, and he turned to face it.

'Hi, Sam.' The holographic image of Admiral Albert Calavicci, the government's observer on Project: Quantum Leap, was dressed in a pink and purple Hawaiian beach shirt and brown slacks. He caught Sam's look. 'Hey, I was getting a start on my tan. Tina knows this great place out by Big Sur and I thought…'

'Nice to see you, Al.'

'What? Who's Al?' asked Kim.

'Sorry, honey, just – thinking out loud for a moment. I'll be right back, okay? I just remembered I should have made for the little boys' room when we arrived here.'

Al threw his hands out from his sides. 'Damn it, Sam! You know how tired I am of sneaking around the heads all the damned time? I must have seen more toilet bowls in the last year than a sanitation engineer sees in his whole career.'

Business being as slow as it was, there was no-one in the toilet; now, at least, Sam could have a conversation with thin air without being observed. 'At least it seems pretty peaceful so far,' he mused. 'Maybe I won't have to do anything really hazardous on this Leap.'

'Well, here's hoping. Before I tell you what we've got so far, you got anything yourself yet?'

Sam beamed. 'As a matter of fact, Mr. Smart Guy, I have. I found out my name already. It's John Lincoln.'

'Wrong.'

'Wrong? Al, I…'

'Look at your driver's licence, _then_ argue with me. It's August 13, 1965, and we're in Arizona; near Milburn, which is a small town about fifty miles from Phoenix.'

The Observer squinted at the object in his hand, which looked like a pocket calculator covered in Christmas tree lights. 'Your name is John _Loengard_, not Lincoln. You graduated in political science from UCLA, and you lived in Washington, where you used to work for a – con? Well, I guess Washington's full of crooks.' Al slapped the side of the handlink with the heel of his hand. It chirruped cheerfully. 'Right, that's better. You worked for a Congressman named Charles Pratt. I say "lived" because there seems to have been some kind of weird stuff going on. Pratt got killed about two years ago, Loengard left town in a hell of a hurry, and it looks like he and the girl must have been wandering the country since then, because Ziggy can't get a make on him anywhere since late 1963.'

'You mean I'm on the run?'

'Looks that way.' Al leaned forward. 'Sam, I got to tell you, this guy Loengard has got to be some kind of nut. He's back in the Waiting Room and we couldn't even get _near_ him, and he's screaming something about hives.'

'Complaining about his allergies?' Sam smiled. 'Boy, that's a good one.'

'Tell me about it; he damned near cold-cocked me. In the end, Dr. Beeks and I sort of double-teamed him and she managed to shoot him up with some kind of sedative. He's taking a little nap right now.'

'So why did Loengard's fiancée give the name Lincoln?'

'Well, this is a motel, Sam. Sometimes people come to motels and they don't give their real names because they…'

'Please, Al, lift your mind out of the gutter for a moment!' Sam raised his hands; he almost reached out to shake Al by the shoulders before he remembered that the man standing in front of him was merely a holographic image.

'I guess it does make a kind of sense,' he conceded. 'The girl I'm with, Kim, she seems very nervous. I haven't figured out why just yet.'

'Yeah, I noticed. She's not bad. Reminds me of a nurse I met in an evac hospital in 'Nam. Boy, she had more curves than a major league pitcher.'

'Al, can we get back to the point here?' Sam chided.

'Sorry, I guess I got a little – sidetracked.'

'Forget that now. Does Ziggy know yet why I'm here?'

'Ah, not just yet. We're still running scenarios, but Ziggy's having a snit because we've got so little hard data to go on. I guess all you can do for now is hang in there and see what develops. I'll drop by when we've got something more positive to report.'

'Maybe I can drop something into the mix here. Kim mentioned a guy called Frank Bach. Have Ziggy run a check on him. I get the impression that Bach is chasing us for some reason. Maybe Loengard killed Pratt, and Bach is the cop trailing him. It might help.'

'Kind of like _The Fugitive_.'

'Who?'

'Old TV show. Your Swiss-cheesed brain probably lost that detail somewhere along the line.' Al frowned. 'Bach, eh? I know that – yeah, no wonder this date sounded so familiar. I'm flying over Georgia sometime tonight and I crash a Phantom. There was a guy called Bach in charge of my hearing. I thought I was going to get hung out to dry, but it just blew right over. Wasn't long after that I got picked up by NASA. Sure, Sam, I'll look into it.' Al pressed a button on the remote. Behind him, a bright white rectangle rose up from the floor; Al stepped back into it. 'Hang tough, pal,' he said, just before the rectangle dropped closed again.

As Sam returned to his seat, he noticed another customer enter the diner; a young man, thin, bespectacled and rather awkward-looking, wearing a red blouson jacket with some kind of college insignia, Californian at a guess. The waitress gave him a broad smile. 'Stevie! Lord, it's been _ages!_ What brings you out this way?'

Stevie returned her grin. 'Don't act so innocent, Rosemary. You've got to know why I'm here.'

Rosemary's hand flew to her throat. 'Dare I hope…' she said, eyelashes fluttering.

'Hey, another time, sure. But I've come about the lights in the sky.'

'Then you've wasted your time and your gas.' The receptionist stood at the door to the kitchen, leaning against the lintel and fixing the young man with a soured-milk glare. 'Someone's misinformed you, son. We didn't see no lights.'

'Mom, we saw…'

'Nothin' worth talkin' about. Now get your nose out of that trashy novel and get your mind about your work.' The older woman glared at the younger before turning away. Something in her tone told Rosemary that her mother would brook no further argument; she tucked a paper napkin into the book to mark her place and stashed it under the counter.

'Lights? In the sky?' Kim looked not so much puzzled as concerned. She beckoned across to the young man, who caught the signal and joined them at table.

'I'm sorry if I seem rude, but what was that you were saying about lights?' Kim asked.

'You don't know?' asked Stevie.

'We're from – out of town,' Sam explained.

'There's been weird lights in the sky around here these last three nights. Nobody seems to know what they're supposed to be. The Air Force has been putting out crap – pardon me, ma'am – about night flights, but these things don't seem to behave like planes.'

As they spoke, Rosemary had glanced quickly at the door. Evidently the coast was clear; she leaned forward to cut in on the last comment. 'It was the same last year, Stevie. It went on for four straight nights.'

'You were here?'

'Just Mom and I; Dad was in Tucson on business. I remember one of them came in real close,' Rosemary almost whispered. 'I swear, every electrical gadget in the place came on. Lights switchin' themselves on and off, irons, TVs, vacuum cleaners, even the rotisserie in the kitchen in back. And the noise! I thought it was goin' to rattle my teeth clean out of my head! Then Mom went out to get a closer look. That was the really weird part. The moment the door closed, the whole room went black. Next I know, it's half an hour later and I find Mom asleep on the couch in our rooms.'

'A report went to Project: Blue Book.' Al Calavicci stepped back into sight alongside the young woman.

'Al!' Sam exclaimed.

'Al?' Kim queried.

'I mean – I'll bet that made all the papers.'

'No way, José,' said Al. 'Blue Book's conclusion was that the whole lights-in-the-sky bit was "abnormal activity in the Aurora Borealis". Come on! This is Arizona, not Alaska.'

'Didn't they – I mean, didn't you tell anyone about it?' Sam asked.

'I wanted to, but I wasn't sure where to go…'

'Try the _National Enquirer_,' Al suggested.

'…and Mom wouldn't even discuss it. Not the lights, not the weird stuff with the electricity, not the fact that neither of us can remember the thirty minutes after she stepped outside. Dad left about three months later; I don't think it was because of that, but…' Rosemary fumbled in her apron pocket, found a wadded paper tissue and dabbed at her eyes with it. 'Hey, I shouldn't be unloading all this stuff on you, it's not right.'

'Don't worry, honey, it's okay,' soothed Kim.

Al was examining the handlink again. 'Ziggy came through quicker than I thought; you will not believe this. I was right about Bach, by the way; he is the same guy who should be getting ready to tear me a new butthole about now. But Ziggy absolutely cannot get anything about him. Some kind of top secret thing.'

'You have top secret clearance,' Sam protested.

Kim glanced at him. 'John, I worked in Jackie Kennedy's private office. That's hardly major league access.'

'Not this much,' Al continued. 'And Ziggy's sending back messages that say that if I push it too hard, I may get taken for a long ride off a very short pier.'

'So I guess that line of enquiry is dead. Is anything else new?'

'That's why I'm here. We did some digging into local property records and the like, and we put names to the All-American and her daughter; they're Alice and Rosemary Walker. Alice owns the place, Rosemary helps out. It used to be a husband-and-wife operation, but Alice's husband ran out on her about nine months ago, started divorce proceedings.

'But the biggie is, Ziggy gets a probability of 87.4 per cent that you're here to stop them disappearing.'

'Disappearing?' Sam said under his breath.

'Two days from now, a neighbour gets concerned because neither Alice nor Rosemary is answering the phone. When the police get out here, they find the place abandoned. Nobody hears from either of them again.'

'When does it happen?' Sam asked.

'We don't know for sure,' replied Al.

'I guess if they come back, it ought to be about ten,' answered Rosemary. 'It has been, other times.'

Kim's face wore the distracted expression Sam had seen earlier. When she spoke, it was in a low, dull voice. 'When they come, we'll be here.'

Pinballing through history these last few years had punched some big holes in Sam's memory, but some things he could remember as clearly as others remembered yesterday. Even if the setting and the circumstances were different, the next few hours reminded him of days when he was a boy in Indiana, when his father or his brother Tom would take him out hunting, usually for pheasant, sometimes for bigger game. Much of the time was spent waiting, anticipating something happening, making ready.

He recognised the signs here. Stevie was constantly moving; from a battered pick-up truck parked in the motel's lot, he had brought a cumbersome case which he sat by the main window in the dining room, overlooking the highway. Now he prowled the room, occasionally stopping by the window and looking out into the night sky with a hand shading his brow. Twice Rosemary had asked him to sit down on ground that he was making her nervous; twice he had relented, but for no more than ten minutes at a stretch.

Kim had looked unsettled almost since their arrival here, but as she walked back towards the lobby she suddenly froze, as though someone had just shoved a gun into her back. She half-turned. 'John!' she hissed.

Sam quickly joined her. 'What is it?' he asked.

'I knew it. Listen.'

Alice Walker, half-screened from their view behind an ivy-covered room divider, was speaking to someone on the telephone; but the sounds she was making were not so much words as harsh, sibilant rasps, with occasional fragments of English – _Highway 93_, _Milburn_ and, ominously, _Rosemary_ – dropped into the stream like pebbles.

Sam glanced at Kim. She met his gaze, gripped his wrist with unexpected fierceness. 'John, she's Hive,' she whispered.

Sam was perplexed. Al had said that John Loengard had been raving about hives, but Kim plainly meant the word as an affiliation of some kind. 'She is?' he asked.

'The voice. And this close, I can feel an echo of it in my head. One of those – those _things_.'

Alice was speaking more loudly; it wasn't necessary to understand the language to recognise an argument in progress. As Kim tugged at Sam's arm, prompting a retreat from sight, the proprietor's voice fell back to normal pitch, a hint of resignation in her last words as she replaced the receiver.

Kim stared at Sam. 'Something's going to happen here, John. Tonight.'

'I know. Whatever these UFOs are, they're going to come tonight and take Alice and Rosemary away.'

'Did Alice say that?' Kim's expression screamed lack of understanding. 'John, we've never been able to understand the Hive's language…'

Sam gripped the woman's shoulders. 'Kim, trust me on this. Find Rosemary. Stick with her. Don't let her out of your sight if you can.' At the edge of his vision, Sam saw a familiar patch of pure white, and an equally familiar figure stepping from it. 'Go,' he implored.

Kim went.

Al Calavicci had now added a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts to his vacation attire. Unfortunately, he still lacked the tan that would make the ensemble more credible. 'Did I just miss something?' he asked.

'For once, Al, your timing is perfect. I hope.'

'Oh. Okay, well, I got more on Alice and Rosemary.' Al jabbed furiously at the handlink's key-pad. 'When they disappeared, Alice's husband was pulled in for questioning by the Yavapai County sheriff's office. They never charged him, but the details are still on the files. According to Jack, Alice went a little nuts after these UFOs passed by last year. She said, "I have responsibilities to those who will return" – her very words. And I don't think she was talking about the people who stay at this joint.' Al swept his gaze around the lobby. 'I've seen _roaches_ that'd turn this motel down.'

'Great. This is starting to make a little more sense.'

'That's good.'

'What about Loengard?'

'Well, he's a little friendlier. I think he's convinced himself that we're on the same side.'

'Has he said much? I could really…'

Alice Walker came back into view, striding across the lobby carrying a black, rectangular object, about the size of a briefcase, between her hands. Sam almost fell backwards as he retreated from her line of sight; the action, though, seemed meaningless, Alice staring directly ahead as she went through the door to the parking lot and the main highway.

'Kind of wrapped up in herself, isn't she?' Al suggested.

Sam ducked across to the doorway. 'I can't follow her, it's wide open out there, she'll see me. You, on the other hand…'

'Way ahead of you.' Al prodded the handlink. 'Gushy, centre me on Alice!' The Observer blinked out of sight.

Sam had to remind himself not to run back into the dining room; Rosemary was spooked enough as it was. As he entered, he saw Stevie fiddling with a tripod on which he had mounted a cine-camera produced from his heavy case. Kim and Rosemary were in detailed conversation; they barely registered his entrance.

'Nice set-up,' Sam said to the young man.

'This? It's a Super 8; a loaner from college. I'm a film major. We're supposed to do a short on "how I spent my vacation" – you know, kind of like sixth-grade English class? – but with our own spin on it. If I'm right about these UFOs, I should get something to knock everyone's eyes out of their heads.'

'I guess so.'

'Well, I figured anyone could make the likes of "Sorority Babes on Spring Break". I wanted something with a little more – atmosphere.'

Al, if he had been here, would probably have made some comment about his own experiences with sorority babes. Sam decided not to editorialise. Instead, he glanced at his watch. 'Quarter of ten,' he said.

'Yeah. Y'know, if these things really are from another planet, it could change – well, everything, I guess.'

'You think so?'

'Sure. Think about it. Any truly advanced civilisation would have outgrown war by the time it began to reach out to other worlds. They would come in peace. They could teach us so much…' Stevie suddenly fell silent.

'What is it? Have…'

The student turned to face the women. His voice came out as a whisper: 'They're coming.'

As Stevie turned back to the camera, Al popped back into sight. 'Oh, boy, are we in trouble,' he sighed.

'What happened, Al? What is Alice doing?'

'She was carrying something. Kind of triangle-shaped with the corners cut off, and metallic, maybe gold. There's a weird pattern on it. More triangles and squares with some fancy swirls around it.'

'Sounds like some kind of home plate.'

'Sam, the aliens are coming.' Al's voice sounded almost haunted. 'Remember I said I crashed a plane sometime tonight? Well, I was being tracked by something with those same markings. It was a UFO. It zipped out of sight when I was ordered to fire on it, and I lost control of the plane. Which makes Loengard's story even more important.'

'So what has he said?'

'He's not running from the cops – he's running from his old boss, Frank Bach. Do you remember what happened at Roswell? 1947?'

'I think so. The Air Force supposedly shot down an alien spaceship. Turned out it was a weather balloon.' The shoe dropped; Sam's eyes widened. 'You mean it really _was_…?'

'One hundred per cent. Turns out that Loengard belonged to a set-up called Majestic – a group so secret that even the President doesn't know about it, set up by Harry Truman after Roswell to protect the country from alien invasion.' Al spread his hands in dismay. 'I tell you, Sam, these guys have a licence to do _anything_ and answer to _no-one_. And those markings are just like the ones Loengard described as being on the Roswell aliens' ships. And the one I run into tonight.'

'That's it. Alice went missing last year because these aliens abducted her.'

'And now they're coming back to finish the job.'

'John, who are you talking to?'

Sam looked around to find Kim's gaze on him. Many times, it seemed to him, people had witnessed him talking to the hologram that only he could see or hear, and had assumed him to be crazy. Now, though, something in Kim Sayers' face told him that she was afraid for herself as much as him.

'It's all right, Kim. I know exactly what's going on.'

'Is that a fact, now, Mr. Lincoln – or should I say _Loengard?_'

Alice Walker was standing in the doorway to the dining room, carrying a very large and very ugly-looking pistol. 'We weren't expecting this kind of bonus tonight. You and Miss Sayers are going to make some people very happy.' She strolled closer to Sam, the gun not moving; she smiled at her daughter. Rosemary shuddered. 'Sorry we don't have time to pack, honey, but we're going to be taking a little trip.'

'Damn! My truck!'

The voice was Stevie's; without thinking, he threw open the door to the parking lot and bolted. Alice wheeled the gun to fire at him; Sam flung his left arm upward as Rosemary screamed, shoving Alice's aim ceilingward so that the shot smacked harmlessly into the paintwork. There was no time to be chivalrous; he grabbed her right arm at the wrist. As they wrestled, he jabbed a thumb hard into the point where the wrist meets the hand, hoping to hit some nerve plexus which might make her drop the gun.

Now it was Alice's turn to scream, a blood-chilling yodel which was as much Hive as human. Kim took that as her cue to take action; as Sam struggled with the Hive-possessed woman, she picked up a heavy tray. The Leaper saw her; he strained to hold Alice more or less still – and it _was_ a strain; she was every bit as strong as she looked.

Two-handed, Kim brought the tray down hard on the back of Alice's head. The woman made a gurgling sound far at the back of her throat as she fell.

As though freed from some spell of paralysis, Rosemary rushed to her mother's side. 'Oh, my God, is she…?' she asked.

Sam knelt to feel at Alice's wrist and neck. 'No, there's a pulse. She's just going to be out for a while.'

'But when she wakes up, the ganglion in her head is going to be out for blood.' Kim frowned. 'Unless – unless we can remove it.'

'Remove it?' Sam felt his own blood chill. What did she mean? Were they going to have to saw the top of Alice's head off, or something?

'Do an A.R.T.,' said Kim.

'It's okay, Sam.' Al Calavicci was peering over Kim's shoulder. 'Loengard told me all about it. A.R.T. stands for Alien Rejection Technique. First thing you need is…'

'Seltzer water.' Kim was talking to Rosemary. 'We need about a beakerful of seltzer water. Quickly! Your mother may come around any time!'

'All right.' Rosemary's eyes were wide, shocked; but she still got up, disappeared into a recess to emerge some moments later with a packet of Alka-Seltzer tablets. She dropped about half the packet into some water, brought it back with the glass tumbler almost overflowing.

'Okay. Hold her steady, John.' Kim prised Alice's jaws apart. 'Now, Rosemary, pour the water into your mother's mouth, slowly.'

Rosemary did as she was bidden. As the liquid trickled down Alice's throat, her whole body heaved in a giant convulsion; Sam threw his weight over her to hold her down.

'What's happening?' Rosemary almost shrieked.

'The seltzer is upsetting the pH balance of Alice's body,' Kim explained. 'Now we need some acetone.'

'What's that?' asked Rosemary.

'The stuff you use to take off nail polish,' answered Sam, his voice strangulated with effort.

'Well, I've got some, but it's just in those dinky little bottles…'

'How much do we need, John?' Kim asked.

'How much do we need?' Sam repeated to Al.

The hologram grimaced. 'Loengard didn't say. And you don't have time for me to go ask; the E.T.s are going to be ripping the roof off this place any time now.'

'Have to take a guess at – hey!'

Sam was flung to one side as the possessed Alice, with strength drawn from who knew where, raised herself upright. The older woman propped herself upright on one arm, glared at the visitors. A hideous rattling sound came from the base of her throat. Her eyes widened and bulged as she pinned her full attention on Sam. She began to bring herself upright.

'No, you don't!' As Alice rose unsteadily to her feet, Kim stepped between her and Sam and brought out a left cross that would have delighted even Muhammad Ali (_was he still Cassius Clay,_ wondered a small scrap of Sam's mind). Alice was moving too slowly to avoid it; she crashed to the carpet and was still at last.

'Nice shot!' Al enthused. 'I never want this woman mad at me.'

Behind them, Rosemary returned. She almost screamed again at the sight of her fallen mother, but bravely turned it into a gulp instead. 'I've found some acetone stuff,' she said. 'Now what do we do?'

'Loengard says you inject it into the back of Alice's neck, and then restrain her,' answered Al.

'Hypodermic,' said Sam.

'Needles? We haven't got… Oh. Maybe in the first aid box.' Rosemary ducked behind the reception desk, started opening and closing drawers with loud slams.

With the immediate crisis over, Kim had moved over to the window, something Sam wasn't aware of until her cry of alarm sounded out. 'John! They've got Stevie!' she shouted.

'What?'

'There's an alien ship hovering over the parking lot! It's got a beam of light trained on Stevie's truck and trying to lift it off the ground!'

'But I've got to stay with Alice,' Sam muttered to himself.

'I've got to go to help him, John,' said Kim. 'You know I have to. You know why.'

'Kim! Wait…' Sam's plea fell on empty air; Kim had already opened the door to the lot and was gone. Instead, Sam turned to Al. 'Go with her, Al. Watch her,' he asked.

'Me? What can I do? I'm a hologram, remember? I can't go slugging it out with little green men.'

'They're grey, not green. And it'd make me feel easier. Really.'

'Okay. If things start getting ugly, I'll holler.' Al tapped the handlink three times, and winked out of sight.

'I found a syringe!' Rosemary was returning to Sam's side. 'Now what?'

'Pour the acetone into the syringe, quickly.' Rosemary followed the instructions eagerly, handed the syringe to him without a word.

Sam took a deep breath. 'Okay, here goes.'

What seemed like an age ago now, Al had told Sam that he had a medical degree – one of the seven doctorates he had been awarded over the years. Now a fragment of that array of knowledge returned to the forefront of his mind. There was a blood vessel on either side of the neck that ran directly into the brain. On the assumption that whatever was controlling Alice was inside her head, injecting the acetone into that blood vessel was the quickest way to get the stuff where it was needed. He found the spot, jabbed in the needle. His finger pushed on the plunger.

Sam counted off seconds in his mind. He had got to seven when Alice gave a strangulated yelp. Her mouth opened; horrible retching sounds emerged from her throat.

'She's choking to death!' yelled Rosemary.

'I don't think so,' replied Sam. 'Look.'

Squirming its way free from Alice's mouth was something the like of which Sam instinctively knew he had never seen. Half spider, half scorpion in appearance, it crawled free of Alice's head, took five wobbly paces forward onto the orange-brown carpet before its spindly legs collapsed beneath it. It made a strange hissing, rattling sound.

'Oh, my God!' Rosemary yelped. Before Sam could do anything to stop her, the girl was stomping on the creature, the first shot tentative, the others increasing in venom before she was finally satisfied that this obscenity was truly dead. Bare moments after its death, it began to dissolve, the toxic acetone ripping its body tissues apart from the inside out. Fumes rose from the carcass; within a further twenty seconds, it was little more than a messy stain on the carpet.

'Mom…' Rosemary's legs were none too stable, either; Sam felt her about to drop, guided her to an easy chair.

'It's okay, Rosemary. It's over. Alice is going to be just fine.'

But what of Stevie? And Kim? Sam rushed to the door to the parking lot, looked out into the night. Stevie was hanging onto the front fender of his truck like a dog refusing to let go of a particularly juicy bone. The truck and its owner were several feet clear of the ground by now; Kim was hanging onto the young man's belt before he drifted away completely.

'Damn it, let the damned thing go!' Stevie yelled. 'You've got a _spaceship_, for God's sake! What do you want a truck for?'

Someone in the spaceship must have heard him. The light snapped off like a torch being extinguished; the pick-up crashed the ten feet or so back to _terra firma_ with a jolt loud enough to carry all the way back into town. Stevie relaxed his grip and rolled backward, his effort spent.

'I think they've decided they've lost this time,' said Kim. She pointed upward. 'See?'

Above them, the spaceship began to rise with increasing speed; it halted in mid-air, just for a moment, then darted away northward over the desert with a speed no Earthbound aircraft could match.

'I wonder what it would be like to fly one of those babies,' said Al.

'Do you really want to know that?' asked Sam.

It was close to midnight by now. Alice, conscious once more, was being fed hot, sweet tea by her solicitous daughter and the two were deep in conversation, with Kim pulled into the discussion like a long-lost relative. Stevie, not surprisingly, had made sure his camera was okay as soon as he had got back indoors; now he was in the lobby making a phone call.

'Well, looks like things are getting back to normal around here.' Al was prodding the handlink with gusto. 'You did it, Sam. With that whoozis out of Alice's head, she goes right back to being her old self. She and Jack get back together again, they get this place on track, and by the time they retire in 1987, they've got a dozen thriving hotels all across the Southwest. Rosemary gets married in three years' time – _not_ to Stevie, I might add – and she and her husband run the chain today. They've got a nice spread out in Sun Valley, very upscale. And a couple of kids.'

'That's great, Al,' said Sam. 'But I still think something's wrong. I stopped Rosemary from being abducted, and I got that thing out of Alice's head. If I did all that, why haven't I Leaped?'

Across the room, Stevie was returning. 'It's okay, Rosemary. My dad's going to come out and get me. Boy, this is just going to blow his socks off!' he said, patting the cine-camera.

'You've got it? On film?' Kim looked worried. 'Stevie, if people find out about it, you could be in danger. Believe me, John and I know that very well.'

'Well, I guess I wasn't going to make a show of it. Not yet, anyway. People wouldn't believe it. A movie needs more than just this to be believable. But I can work on that. Give me a while, and I'll make tonight into a movie the whole world will come and see.'

Rosemary swatted the young man's arm. 'My, my, Mr. Spielberg, don't you talk big?'

Al and Sam looked at each other; the electric-blue glow that accompanied a Leap was swathing Sam's body. They said it together: 'Spielberg?'


End file.
